Understanding how the intricate spots and stripes, or Turing patterns, of many animals form can help scientists mimic those processes in the lab.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Patterns
Displaying 1 - 20 of 22 articles
Nature begins forming patterns at the molecular level – and sometimes they grow to enormous sizes.
Architect Christopher Alexander’s work will continue to be important not only for designing buildings but also in light of contemporary debates about how data always comes from specific settings.
Numerology ties in with how our brains work, but that doesn’t mean its claims make sense.
As our cities get hotter, rebuilding whole suburbs better suited to the heat is not an option. Instead, we can draw from the best examples of how to adapt neighbourhoods and behaviours.
We wanted to find out which biological phenomena are crucial for pattern formation and which are just incidental. These sorts of questions can be answered with mathematical modelling.
Given that we know humans moved across these landscapes, we wondered whether there might also be evidence of other forms of human activity on these surfaces of sand.
On top of teaching them how to recognize numbers and count to 10, make sure they’re playing with puzzles.
What do earthquakes, wealthy Italian families and your circulatory system have in common? Scientists use fractals, self-similarity and power laws to translate from local to global scales.
Coach students to analyze the credibility of sources, but teaching them how genre and experiential patterns can be manipulated is also relevant.
Zebrafish are known for their black and gold stripes, but researchers are still figuring out how pigment cells interact to form these patterns.
A mathematician has joined the dots between Alan Turing and chasing cells to find out how skin patterns are formed.
Mathematics and art are generally viewed as very different. But a trip through history – from an Islamic palace to Pollock’s paintings – proves the parallels between the two can be uncanny.
Fractals are patterns that repeat at increasingly fine magnifications. They turn up in the natural world and in artists’ work. Research suggests they contribute to making something aesthetically appealing.
Welcome to the world of cloths and materials that change depending on your mood.
Many scientists didn’t believe that crystals made up of never-repeating patterns could exist. But they do and scientists are starting to understand the weird maths behind them.
The first digits of numbers in a data set aren’t distributed equally. And now you know more than a lot of fraudsters do – and should – when they’re making up their phony numbers.
When you see a repeating pattern, your mind easily imagines it continuing to infinity. There are mathematical rules behind the intriguing visuals.
Predicting infectious disease outbreaks is a tricky task to begin with. And it’s made harder still by the fact that any individual outcome is subject to unpredictable – or stochastic – effects.
Patterns are simple sequences that repeat over and over again in a certain order. Supporting children’s ability to recognize patterns can improve mathematical skills.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt University
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Professor and Director of Doherty Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor of Mathematics, Western New England University
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Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University
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Professor in Mathematical Biology, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor of Mathematics, Williams College
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Associate Professor of Mathematics, Santa Clara University
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Research Fellow, Mathematical Biology and Physiology, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Biology, University of Bath
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Research Fellow Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds
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Senior Research Professor, Heriot-Watt University
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Director of the Materials Science Institute and Professor of Physics, University of Oregon
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Associate Professor, Design Studies, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney
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Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, Cardiff University
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Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of South Carolina
